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> The core issue I've seen that goes unanswered is what problem does BTC solve? To me, it's trustless money. I don't need to trust the US gov, I don't care abo

> The core issue I've seen that goes unanswered is what problem does BTC solve? To me, it's trustless money. I don't need to trust the US gov, I don't care about who they will elect or which wars they are gonna start or which banks they are gonna bailout. You can verify everything through code and math. If that's not valuable to you, maybe there's some other use case you're interested. If you've done your research and there's really no use case that excites you, then you can just ignore it.

MrMan 6y ago
Trustless is bad. Humans need trust without it we get genocide and other bad things. Trustless is another way of expressing a desire for a fantasy world where people are not interdependent and each hacker can live in their own bubble with no obligations to society. At some point the militias you pay to kill and protect you will kill you hoping to find your treasure hoard
tw600040 6y ago
It's NOT trustless money. Instead of trusting the US gov, you are trusting that this decentralized ledger will gain acceptance by the whole world. Which one is more of a leap of faith?
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  > you are trusting that this decentralized ledger will gain acceptance by the whole world. Bitcoin itself is inherently trustless, that's the whole point of it. You can trust that there will never be more than 21M Bitcoins, you can trust that there will never be a double-spend, you can trust that it will run 24/7, etc. Whether it will gain worldwide acceptance is another matter (btw, adoption is increasing at very fast pace now), as long as there's a subset of the world that accepts it, that's good enough for me.
  - tablespoon 6y ago
    > Bitcoin itself is inherently trustless, that's the whole point of it. You can trust that there will never be more than 21M Bitcoins, you can trust that there will never be a double-spend, you can trust that it will run 24/7, etc. No it isn't. If the Bitcoin devs and miners agree on a change (for instance, to increase the cap), it'll happen, so you have to trust them.
    - rawtxapp 6y ago
      They can't implement those changes uni-laterally, it would cause a hard-fork. In addition to devs and miners, you need users, network nodes and exchanges to agree to it as well. And even if that change were to go through, there will still be people running the old chain (Ethereum Classic is still alive). So those parameters would only change if they improve the network for most stakeholders, otherwise, most people would stay on the old chain.
      - tablespoon 6y ago
        > They can't implement those changes uni-laterally, it would cause a hard-fork. In addition to devs and miners, you need users, network nodes and exchanges to agree to it as well. Sure, but the devs do have the "Bitcoin" name, which would leave them well-positioned to market their changes. Bitcoin Classic may stick around, but like Etherium Classic, it may not be very healthy: https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-classic-blockchain-subject-to-yet-another-51-attack https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-classic-blockchain-subject...
        rawtxapp 6y ago
        Nobody owns the "Bitcoin" name, people collectively decide which chaintip to call Bitcoin and that's it. The devs own "Bitcoin Core" which is just one implementation of the network.
        tw600040 6y ago
        This is where the difference between theory and practice comes in. Who is 'people' here? Billions of people today have no idea what bitcoin is and will have no say in 'collectively' deciding which chain tip to call 'Bitcoin'. BTC is decentralized in theory, but with literally .0001% of the population owning like 99% of BTC it can't get more centralized..
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > Which one is more of a leap of faith? Governments of course. Anything is better than trusting governments.
  - MrMan 6y ago
    Ha ha good one
imtringued 6y ago
>To me, it's trustless money. I don't need to trust the US gov, I don't care about who they will elect or which wars they are gonna start or which banks they are gonna bailout. If there is nothing to spend your Bitcoin it's worthless. If there is no US economy that is begging to exchange "worthless" dollars to Bitcoin then your Bitcoin will not amount to much. Really, when people are betting on Bitcoin or gold they assume that in the future there will be a bigger pie and thanks to their ownership stake in Bitcoin or gold they receive the same percetage portion of the bigger pie. If the pie shrinks because of a war then guess what? Your Bitcoin will be just as worthless as the dollar.

MrMan 6y ago

Trustless is bad. Humans need trust without it we get genocide and other bad things. Trustless is another way of expressing a desire for a fantasy world where people are not interdependent and each hacker can live in their own bubble with no obligations to society. At some point the militias you pay to kill and protect you will kill you hoping to find your treasure hoard

tw600040 6y ago

It's NOT trustless money. Instead of trusting the US gov, you are trusting that this decentralized ledger will gain acceptance by the whole world. Which one is more of a leap of faith?

rawtxapp 6y ago
> you are trusting that this decentralized ledger will gain acceptance by the whole world. Bitcoin itself is inherently trustless, that's the whole point of it. You can trust that there will never be more than 21M Bitcoins, you can trust that there will never be a double-spend, you can trust that it will run 24/7, etc. Whether it will gain worldwide acceptance is another matter (btw, adoption is increasing at very fast pace now), as long as there's a subset of the world that accepts it, that's good enough for me.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > Bitcoin itself is inherently trustless, that's the whole point of it. You can trust that there will never be more than 21M Bitcoins, you can trust that there will never be a double-spend, you can trust that it will run 24/7, etc. No it isn't. If the Bitcoin devs and miners agree on a change (for instance, to increase the cap), it'll happen, so you have to trust them.
  - rawtxapp 6y ago
    They can't implement those changes uni-laterally, it would cause a hard-fork. In addition to devs and miners, you need users, network nodes and exchanges to agree to it as well. And even if that change were to go through, there will still be people running the old chain (Ethereum Classic is still alive). So those parameters would only change if they improve the network for most stakeholders, otherwise, most people would stay on the old chain.
    - tablespoon 6y ago
      > They can't implement those changes uni-laterally, it would cause a hard-fork. In addition to devs and miners, you need users, network nodes and exchanges to agree to it as well. Sure, but the devs do have the "Bitcoin" name, which would leave them well-positioned to market their changes. Bitcoin Classic may stick around, but like Etherium Classic, it may not be very healthy: https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-classic-blockchain-subject-to-yet-another-51-attack https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-classic-blockchain-subject...
      - rawtxapp 6y ago
        Nobody owns the "Bitcoin" name, people collectively decide which chaintip to call Bitcoin and that's it. The devs own "Bitcoin Core" which is just one implementation of the network.
        tw600040 6y ago
        This is where the difference between theory and practice comes in. Who is 'people' here? Billions of people today have no idea what bitcoin is and will have no say in 'collectively' deciding which chain tip to call 'Bitcoin'. BTC is decentralized in theory, but with literally .0001% of the population owning like 99% of BTC it can't get more centralized..
matheusmoreira 6y ago
> Which one is more of a leap of faith? Governments of course. Anything is better than trusting governments.
- MrMan 6y ago
  Ha ha good one

imtringued 6y ago

>To me, it's trustless money. I don't need to trust the US gov, I don't care about who they will elect or which wars they are gonna start or which banks they are gonna bailout. If there is nothing to spend your Bitcoin it's worthless. If there is no US economy that is begging to exchange "worthless" dollars to Bitcoin then your Bitcoin will not amount to much. Really, when people are betting on Bitcoin or gold they assume that in the future there will be a bigger pie and thanks to their ownership stake in Bitcoin or gold they receive the same percetage portion of the bigger pie. If the pie shrinks because of a war then guess what? Your Bitcoin will be just as worthless as the dollar.